Comment by vladvasiliu

We have Elitebooks at work and can confirm that the 8x0 series, at least until G8, has superb Linux support out of the box (and I run Arch, by the way). IME it's actually better than Windows, since both my AMD and Intel models have had things not working on Windows (the AMD still often hangs during sleep).

> Getting one with a QHD to UHD screen is mandatory

But I have to ask: are those screens actually any good? Ours have FHD panels, and I have not seen a single one with a decent screen.

There are roughly two categories: either the el-cheapo screens, with washed-out colors (6 bpp panels on a 1500 EUR laptop!) and dimmer than the moonlight through closed shades, but they have usable angles; or the "sure view" version with very bright backlight, usable outside (not in direct sunlight, of course) with, on paper, ok colors (specs say 100% sRGB) but laughably bad viewing angles (with the sureview off, of course) and, in practice, questionable color fidelity.

These are also fairly expensive, around 1500 EUR, and the components are of questionable quality. The SSDs in particular are dog-slow (but they're very easy to replace).

I have two 5-year-old 840 G8s (one Intel, one AMD), and they have both held up fine, but I usually don't abuse my laptops (my 2013 MBP still looks brand new aside from some scratches). However, looking around at my colleagues' laptops, they tend to fall apart, and I can count on one hand the ones still in good shape. The usual suspects seem to be the barrel power connector and the keyboard. Newer models only have USB-C AFAIK (mine have both, but came with a USB-C power adapter in the box). But they tend to look pretty bad in general, with very misaligned panels and fragile USB ports.